Books Every Educated Person Should Read

by Harry on February 9, 2004

This is a request for help. A student came to me with Will Durant’s list of 100 necessary books which he (the student) thinks needs updating. He, the student, wants to know what books the educated person should have read, that have been published since 1970. I am just about the worst person for him to come to, since unlike all my CT colleagues I am narrowly read and utterly lacking in erudition in subjects other than cricket, children’s TV, the history of the far left, and my professional interests. But you, the readers, are a different matter, and I have access to you. So, submissions, please, of the two books you think every educated person should have read, published 1970 or later. Your reward will be in heaven…

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Some candidates: Doing Our Own Thing (John McWhorter). Never mind his thesis. McWhorter’s book
stands on its own as a cultural survey book.Influence (Cialdini), as necessary as a flu shot, but much more enjoyable.The Crooked Timber of Humanity (Isaiah Berlin), again, a good survey book.The Mind’s I (Hofstadter & Dennet)
because at one point or another, you’ll have
to speak with geeks. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Edward Tufte)
is a good lesson both in how to write and how
to read a graphical argument.
How about fiction?

First, a comment- let’s all please try to follow the “Two Book” rule, to keep this in line!

1)The Economics of Feasible Socialism by Alec Nove.

2) Justice as Fairness: A Re-statement by John Rawls. I recomend this even though the arguments are much more telgraphed than in TJ or PL only because it’s much shorter and more likely to be able to keep a general reader’s interest than the two big books, which should of course be consulted for the full view.

In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust. Arguably the finest single literary work of the 20th century.

The Open Society and its Enemies (Vols.I-II), Karl Popper. A useful antidote against revolutionary utopianism.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, John Allen Paulos. This ought to be mandatory reading for everyone. If it were, perhaps the New York Times wouldn’t be running astrology op-eds.

How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff. I recommend this with the old Disraeli quote in mind; it’s shameful how many “intellectuals” are easily taken in by statistical flimflam.

I see that you’ve abandoned your claim about the Popper book, one of the pleasing ironies of which is the author’s own immense hubris and authoritarianism. If we’re going to talk about the ills of revolutionary utopianism, then the forthright Horowitz volume I mentioned earlier is at least something with a bit of heft.

2 – The Mathematical Experience, Phillip Davis and Reuben Hersh. A nice mix of history, philosophy and the odd bit of actual mathematical insight. Useful for dispelling the notion that maths is the dry stuff taught to engineers and economists.

3 – Whither Socialism?, Joseph E. Stiglitz. Why socialism is doomed to failure: Hayek was right about the price system, and both neoclassical economiscs and market socialism are wrong.

“Whither Socialism” is indeed an excellent book, but I would not say it is about socialism being doomed. Rather it is an attempt to reimagine it and put it on firmer ground.

I am surprised no one has mentioned Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”, first published in English in the early 70s. I think that is certainly a work that will live on from the 20th century, even if no one really does read all three volumes.

And if I wanted to recommend a Philip Roth book written since 1970, it would be “Sabbath’s Theatre” over “American Pastoral” in a heartbeat. American Pastoral is more tired aging-Jewish-male neoconservatism about how great the 50s were; Sabbath’s Theatre is almost Shakespearean.

It is interesting to see so few Math & Science books in this list. Why?

(1) Is it that this forum is more liberal arts inclined?
(2) Is it assumed that any educated person will know enough about Math & Science?
(3) Is it because, unlike liberal arts, the books that a educated person should read in Math & Science are textbooks?

In any case, my contribution to this thread are Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. He makes the subject appear maddeningly easy.

If the cut-off date were earlier, I would suggest either Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence series (1952-69), or her The Golden Notebook (1962). Otherwise, I’d echo the suggestion of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and add (deep breath) Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren (1975).

The question is akin buying contemporary art: the best strategy is to discern genuine esthetic value, figuring that it what will make the work most likely valuable/valued fifty years hence.

So this question is like speculating what book is most likely to be read fifty and hundred years from now as the Second Treatise, Critique of Pure Reason, Don Quixote, Origin of the Species are read today.

One reasonable guess is Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
Larkin (too early?) and Heaney?
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics

Anyway, the game goes to ENDURING worth and being incapable of supercession. Philosophy and literature have it easier than social science and history.

Gulag Archipelago has been mentioned, but since the fall of communism is surely the most important event of the last 30 years, I’ll add “The End of History and the Last Man” by Fukuyama and the just published, yet powerful, “Red Color News Soldier” by Li Zhensheng.

I think some type of non-fiction on computers is warranted as well, so I’ll go with “The Age of Intelligent Machines” by the mastermind Kurzweil.

Finally, de Soto’s “The Mystery of Capital” is the most important development book of the last couple decades, especially given the overwhelming respect he recieves from world leaders, both on the left and the right wing.

I guess reflecting the readership of the blog a lot of the current suggestions seem to be “academic” in nature so I’ll second a lot of the earlier suggestions (Rawls, Nozick, Gould, Ambrose, etc.) and add a few of my own from further afield:

Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
Seamus Heaney – The Cure at Troy
John Irving – The World According to Garp

American Pastoral is more tired aging-Jewish-male neoconservatism about how great the 50s were; Sabbath’s Theatre is almost Shakespearean.

Um … not that there’s any one true reading of a text, but I’m puzzled how you got that meaning out of American Pastoral. Have you read the book that follows it, namely I Married A Communist? American Pastoral, I Married A Communist, and The Human Stain are of a piece, and they make clear that Roth isn’t inflating the Fifties. But even reading it on its own, I don’t see how it’s possible to get that kind of interpretation out of American Pastoral. I’d love to hear more — either on this page or in an email — about how you got this interpretation.

Can someone please tell me why it is that an “educated person should have read” Toni Morrison at all?

(For that matter, why “Orientalism”? Hasn’t Bernard Lewis savaged the late Said enough? Why should any educated person have to wade through “post-colonialist” posturing? Sure, it’s an “important” book, but not in a way that means you have to actually read it. Its importance is at this point mostly historical and probably entirely negative. But I’m sure people will strenuously disagree with me… which is fine, but I want to know why.)

Carl von Clausewitz – “On War”, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret with accompanying essays by Bernard Brodie. Yes, the book was written in the 19th century, but this is the definitive translation and was published in 1976.

Field Marshal Viscount Slim – “Defeat into Victory”. Again, this was written (and the first edition published) before 1970. But… er… the paperback edition didn’t emerge until the 1970’s.

Agree with you on both Morrison and Said. I used to include “Orientalism” on one of my course reading lists, mostly by reputation and habit, until one year a student submitted a brilliant term paper that elegantly demolished the book. That effectively cured me of my habit.

Looks like Durant’s original list (haven’t found it yet, only references) included 4 british poets — this seems excessive, as I can name world-class poets from ten countries (and I don’t even like poetry).
Anyway, I would add:
Ted Chiang’s short story collection _Stories Of Your Life_ has philsophy, fiction, science, and excellent writing. What more could you ask for, except more works?
And suggest that _Metamagical Themas_ would be a better choice for Hofstadter, because (a) it’s broader and (b) it contains one of my favorite essays

I second Thompson’s “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” and Irving’s “World According to Garp,” and Spiegelman’s “Maus” and add the graphic novel series “Barefoot Gen” by Keiji Nakazawa and “Watchmen” by Alan Moore.

Though the best book I’ve read that was written since 1970 is Libra, by Don DeLillo. But I haven’t read White Noise, so I’ll defer to whoever nominated it (also enjoyed Mao II, didn’t care as much for Underworld).

A few years ago New Scientist, I think it was, asked twenty big names in and about science to name the book they would take to a desert island. Only two books appeared more than once on the list, Goedel Escher Bach, and The Eighth Day of Creation. Hofstader was one of the selectors, and his choice had been Eighth Day.. I had never heard about it, but I immediately got it out of the library and read it. And I was blown away. It’s the history of meolecular biology from 1900 to about 1978. All the people, all the lab stories. The project that knocked vitalism on the head. For a bunch of philosophy types who think science is about Prigogine’s speculations, I can’t recommend it too highly. Along with G-E-B, of course.

Good grief, I posted, went to teach, and came back to all this. Yes, I’ll make up some manageable summary when it dies down. Please keep it up — I know people enjoy this, but still its very generous of you to give all this thinking to it.

Second “The Name of the Rose,” by Eco, though I’m torn between that and his “Foucault’s Pendulum.”

If graphic novels are an option, I loved both “Maus” and “Watchmen,” but neither was as good as “Sandman” (Neil Gaiman) or “V for Vendetta” (Alan Moore and David Lloyd). Of those, “Sandman” gets my nod.

I don’t know his corpus well enough to single one book out, but I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Friedrich Hayek.

If second copyrights count, I’d suggest “How To Solve It” by George Polya. If second copyrights don’t count, I’d suggest changing the criterion.

“Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstader(sp? I’m not getting up to look);

“What’s The Name Of This Book” by Raymond Smullyan, which I doubt anyone has heard of. It’s a series of original logic puzzles that start with the classic “island of knights and knaves” form and escalates such that you have to apply theorems from boolean algbra to solve them. In one of his books he takes you all the way to Godel’s incompleteness theorem. In another he lost me entirely in the middle of combinatory logic. I’m recommending the one I understood.

Written in english, my only language.
(translations not allowed)Thomas Pynchon- Gravity’s Rainbow.
James Merrill- The Changing Light at Sandover.
I haven’t read all of it, but it’s the only thing that shook me, in the same way as Pynchon’s book.

Horowitz !!? That’s just bizarre. Being called an asshole by Abiola L. is a plus, but Horowitz is a lost cause.
—
I’d say Pynchon’s a keeper as far as the readers at CT are concerned, but I’d add: probably for the wrong reasons. For all the high conceptual theatrics, the novel is deeply horribly tragic. It’s one long death spiral of predetermination: a cruel commentary on science and technocracy, and deeply anti liberal.. Richard Dawkins as written by Mephistopheles

“probably for the wrong reasons. For all the high conceptual theatrics, the novel is deeply horribly tragic. It’s one long death spiral of predetermination: a cruel commentary on science and technocracy, and deeply anti liberal.. “

And here I thought it was a light-hearted farce on the end of WWII, an affirmation of American values, a whimsical parody of parapsychology

Golly, ya think I got “JR” all wrong too. Does that have dark undertones I missed while rolling in laughter? Nah couldn’t be

I’m not sure I understand the purpose of this list. Is it that any person who has not read a clear majority of the books on the list cannot be considered educated? Or is it simply a list of books which might be enjoyed by people who are already educated? I suppose the intention might be that a person who wishes to become educated about the world could read all or most of the books, and thus achieve a great portion of his or her goal. From that perspective, it’s difficult to see how Hunter S. Thompson, William Gaddis or various comic books would advance a reader along that path, however enjoyable they may be.

If I were writing a complete list, I imagine a great portion of it would be devoted to pop science books, beginning with Stephen Hawking. That said, I don’t think it would require more than ten or twenty texts on evolution. I’d be extremely tentative about including any books on economics, as these mostly seem to addle the mind and cloud the judgement. Forced to choose between Hofstadter’s books on AI and consciousness, I’d vote for Searle’s “The Mystery of Consciousness” or Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”, depending entirely on my own private pettiness.

I imagine I’d feel compelled to include a maths textbook or two, except that it’s difficult for most people to learn maths from a book, so what would be the use? Let’s assume that the reader will learn enough maths in school to get by in most professions. I’m increasingly sure the list is intended to help the reader acquire an informed outlook, not a GED.

As a final recommendation, I believe a well-rounded education will be better served by at least one thick, high quality cookbook than by any number of works by either the excellent Thomas Pynchon or the indefatigable Don Delillo. Preferably Italian, but varying according to taste.

You know, what is really interesting about things like this to me is people’s near total inability to do as asked- to list _two_ books _published after 1970_. That’s not so hard,is it? I suppose nothing matters here, but it’s an interesting phenomena, and one that repeats itself all the time- the total inability of blog commentors to follow simple directions. Funny.

I’m noticing several gaps. I’ve seen very few books so far about music, nature, travel and computers, none about building relationships with colleagues, friends, or loved ones. That is, there’s a major paucity of “right-brain” books. (Well, I’m not sure if music belongs exclusively in the right-brain category, but…)
I think these gaps are important – in that someone truly ‘educated’ ought to understand something about these topics – but I can’t really come up with any great ideas. Anything come to mind?

So many books to mention! A tiny proportion of must-reads include for me: Kanan Makiya’s 1992 book, ‘Cruelty and Silence’ (the ultimate answer to anyone who thinks it was best to leave Saddam in place); Christopher Koch’s marvellous, unusual novel of the Vietnam War, ‘Highways to a War’; Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley(on the 1930’s) and all the Tintin books!

Matt, I’ll have you know that I’m a finalist on Wampumblog for Left Blog Commentator of the Year, and I can tell you that staying on topic and following simple instructions were not among the skills which brought me this great honor.

I keep trying and trying to convince nice left-liberals that the rules in the rulebook are not really important, it’s the rules on the floor that are important.

Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy, by Walter Kaufmann (The translator and scholar/commentator on Nietzsche, Hegel, Goethe, etc.)
&The Doctor and the Soul by Viktor Frankl (Holocaust survivor, and renowned Viennese professor of neurology and psychiatry ).

And another (pre-1970) … The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski – surely one of the most powerful, harrowing novels of all time.

Extremely strong second to Benedict Anderson, about whom I’d forgotten. As a counterpoint, Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism does a nice little dance with Anderson. It also has the benefit of being quite short.

Katherine Dunn – Geek Love (awesome, awesome, awesome. An everyday story of circus freaks, Todd Browning meets David Lynch, etc. but funny and life-affirming at the same time…) [and I never thought I’d use the phrase ‘life-affirming’ without vomiting]

I’d second the Rawls and the Delany, and also share some ambivalence as to whether Morrison lives up to her hype: I think her books are beautiful and intelligent, but I’m not moved or awed enough to put any of them in the top two. Two influential books from my discipline that I haven’t seen mentioned and that I think important to one’s education are Macksey and Donato’s Structuralist Controversy and Millett’s Sexual Politics.

I’ve got a big thing for Howard Zinn’s work, and I think that his autobiography was a brief but wonderfully inspiring work.
1) You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train — Howard Zinn

And maybe this is just a personal bias, but I think that everyone should read Angels in America. (It’s in two pieces, and a play—am I cheating?) Kushner is one of my favorite authors of all time.
2) Angels in America — Tony Kushner

2 books?1) How To Read A Book. Although origianlly published around 1940, this book by Van Doren and Adler has had updates and revisions since 1970. The logic of this title should be self-apparent.
2) The Goldbug Variations by Richard Powers, covers vast intellectual terrain (including Science, Music and Computers) in an engaging fiction.

I already posted with my ideas at the very beginning, but I’m going to second some things I’ve read as I just read through all the comments. Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” (can’t believe I forgot that!) and “Beak of the Finch” (by I forget whom, but it’s in the comments elsewhere), which really should make any nonbeliever of evolution into a believer.

Also, I agree with the idea of a cookbook. Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” doesn’t have excellent recipes, but it does provide a good introduction to cooking and choosing ingredients. It’s rather more basic than anything else we’ve got on this list, though. Perhaps one by Marcella Hazan?

Let me reiterate the recommendations for Don DeLillo – White Noise and Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things: they both say a lot about our modern world without seeming to, and are wonderful to read!

I see that a few people have suggested Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. I would think that, if that is the concept one wishes to get across, one would do better to nominate GC Williams’s Adaptation and Natural Selection; but that fails the cut as having been published in 1966. So if it is Dawkins you want, I’d opt for The Blind Watchmaker instead.

I will second the nomination of Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. This book is very interesting for what it explains, but much more valuable for what it deflates.

I like this sort of thread. Ask for a recommendation for a book, and you’ll get 37 suggestions apiece from 400 people, half of them scholarly peacocks eager to make a vulgar display of learning, and the other half sadists looking to inflict Pynchon and Habermas on an innocent.

If your friend wants to chat books with another educated adult, he should read _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_ and a bunch of Harry Potter. If he wants something a little more substantial, at least than AHWOSG, _The Lovely Bones_ and _The Five People You Meet in Heaven_. If he wants two relatively literary good reads, _Duluth_ by Gore Vidal and _Foucault’s Pendulum_. If he wants knowledge, I believe the A and S volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are the fattest.

I know I’ve commented already, but as we are ignoring the rules: I’d like to second the recommendation of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, and can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. And how about Seamus Heaney’s recent translation of Beowulf? And I’d like to include something by Margaret Atwood, possibly The Handmaid’s Tale or Alias Grace.

Have to second, or third Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and add The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. (The second is a little before 1970, but is, I think, more applicable today than when originally published.)

Steven Weinberg’s Dreams of a Final Theory which I easily recommend before anything by Hawking. It’s more than a description of the hunt for a Grand Unified Theory; it’s about what science is, why it matters, how it works. Weinberg isn’t merely one of the greatest scientist of the past half-century, he’s also a very good writer, attentive to both details and the movements of history.

The Selfish Gene. This almost well, duh. Everyone should have read this already. A textbook, a book which changed biology (by pulling diverse elements together into a new synthesis), and a intelligent popular introduction. Again Dawkins is a very clear writer: but the central ideas are so hard to get that they’re misrepresented more often that understood.

I can’t understand this Gravity’s Rainbow obsession that so many people seem to have. A more unreadable piece of dreck I have never encountered. When will people understand that inaccessibility is not the same thing as depth?

I’d go with The Mathematical Experience and something by Kazuo Ishiguro. My favorite is An Artist in the Floating World but Remains of the Day seems more popular.

Whoops, that’s three isn’t it? Forget I mentioned the second Ishiguro book…

Well, Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose have already been mentioned; so I’ll add Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It may seem like an odd choice, but I really think it’s the best work of fantasy written in decades, and deserves to be considered literature (whereas most of that genre is drek).

Also, David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day is more than just a collection of humorous essays, it’s an examination of how language can be an inclusive and exclusive force. Read it in that context, and it becomes more than a fun read.

Geez, you’d think the request was for the books every educated post-modernist should have read. I wouldn’t suffer anyone to plod through Gravity’s Rainbow unless they had a genuine interest in the arcane or esoteric. And it certainly isn’t for everyone (Do we really need anymore self-righteous hipsters channeling Pynchon in decadent undergrad writing workshops? Isn’t that dangerous?).

And as for all the Rawls? Well, sure, Theory was monumentally important in philosophy. But outside that discipline, who would want to study through all 600 or so pages? The veil of ignorance and maximin, sure, but the intricate details on page 400?

I guess all this is to say, different people will need to read different books. The American historian or the biographer may need to read Robert Caro and the writer might want to bend the 1970 rule and grab 1969’s Portnoy’s Complaint or The Things They Carried (better handbooks for writing than anything Pynchon’s produced). I’d love it if some of our politician’s had read Gordon S. Wood or our Defense Dept. had checked out A Peace to End All Peace. Or maybe The Best and the Brightest. The casual scientist would a be a fool to miss A Brief History of Time. Laurie Garrett has written two great books about global public health, that any public policy type would want to take on.

These are, of course, just the little bits I pick up from my perspective. But it will remain to see what will stand the test of time. Go back to 1950, and then you start to see some real essentials. James Baldwin. Rachel Carson. Vladimir Nabokov.

1. One of the books should be the John McPhee geologies(Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, and Rising from the Plains)separately published originally but later collected under some title like Annals of the former World(?)
2. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Pulitzer winner in 1974)

I want to agree with the poster who put Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters on the list and state that JR by Gaddis is much much better and relevant that Pynchon (who I love) and Delillo (who i can appreciate but find boring)

I want to agree with the poster who put Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters on the list and state that JR by Gaddis is much much better and relevant than Pynchon (who I love) and Delillo (who i can appreciate but find boring)

Well, people keep mentioning cookbooks, but no one’s listed any. So I’m stepping into the breach. The most current edition of “Joy of Cooking” is a must-own (and must-read) for basic home-cooking knowledge (albeit of a Western cultural bent). The most recent version is a substantial departure from pre-1970 editions. Food literacy is important!!!!!!!! As for accessible Italian cooking lore, Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cook Book” and “More Classic Italian Cooking” are wonderful.

Also, aside from some very appropriate mentions (Delany, Gibson, and Ellison being among them), I see very little of what has recently been dubbed “speculative fiction” being mentioned here. Which is a shame. So add Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Left Hand of Darkness” to the list as well.

Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) by Ken Kesey. (To the caviling pedants it may have been published before 1970, but I didn’t read it until 1982.) One of the greatest American novels of the last 50 years, IMO.

I second Libra and a bunch of others mentioned. And just to be even more off topic I recommend the poetry of James Wright.

For Philip Roth, I’d pick The Zuckerman Trilogy or The Counterlife over his more recent stuff (good as it is).

I’ll second Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Suttree and raise you a Child of God.

In non-fiction, you can’t beat Walter Karp’s The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920 (Bush’s misadventure in Iraq has some very disturbing predecessors) and Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent (the indispensable guide to how a “free” press gets co-opted and yet its practitioners don’t even know how they’ve been played).

Cookbooks did you say ? Completely frivolous and NOT in the spirit of the original list, BUT:

1) Simple French Food, by Richard Olney (I’d choose Elizabeth David’s books, which have the additional virtue of being recently reissued by Penguin, but the best ones were published prior to 1970).
2) The Curious Cook, by Harold McGee – You won’t learn to cook, but you won’t mind. You can pretty much open this tome to a random page, and be absorbed for a good half-hour.

Hearty seconds to “A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” and “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” Both are true page-turners, and I can attest that the former is excellent for reading aloud to one’s mate on a long trip.

The posts here suggest to me that I should read “Gravity’s Rainbow” — even if I won’t like it — so it’s on order from Amazon. I’m hoping it won’t be as awful as “Atlas Shrugged,” the last book I read on this particular principal.

I can’t wait to see the final list. Thanks to everyone for your contributions!

“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes. A little bit of science in that one. (I find his crush on Nils Bohr endearing.)

“Encounters with the Archdruid” by
John McPhee.

But I have to say, none of these compare to what I could come up with from the 1940s and 1950s. The amazing thing is how short some of these are:
“A Sand County Almanac”, Aldo Leopold.
“Here is New York,” E.B. White (not even a book, of course, but I’m sentimental and the last page is truer now than then.)
“The Fire Next Time,” James Baldwin.
“Resistance, Rebellion and Death,” Camus.

If you’re looking for radical views of U.S. history I’ll take I.F. Stone over Zinn.

I agree that Paul Bowles is an extraordinary writer, one of the finest American writers in the 20th century, but isn’t ‘Sheltering Sky’ before 1970. Also I think ‘The Spider’s House’ was an even better work to his debut novel. Definitely read Bowles, and avoid the film.

My picks

Jose Saramago – The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Don Delillo – Underworld

But yes, Richard Olney’s “Simple French Food” really is great, but then so is the cookbook I picked up in Madrid in 1995: _Recetas de 200 Cocineros de Sociedades Vascas” by Jose Castillo. It includes a recipe for stewed cat (two of them!).

Food books that everyone should know about:

_History of Food_ by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell. OK, it’s opinionated, but her chapter on caviar is the most informative, and funny, that I’ve ever read.

_Food: A Culinary History_ by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (good but just not as catchy)

_The True History of Chocolate_ by Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe

And my new favorite book — even though it’s a two volume compilation — is _The Legacy of Muslim Spain_ edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi. It’s truly amazingly complete about one of the world’s most fantastic civilizations.

Assuming the original rules meant ONLY TWO books which one should be able to assume an educated person has read (as opposed to those you believe crucial to completing their education), SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Vonnegut (calm down, he only missed by a year) and BELOVED (whence the Morrison backlash?)

I’d second many of the suggestions (Gaddis, Kundera, Marquez) but I’d like to suggest two writers whose work has been deeply influential on literary writers: the poet Elizabeth Bishop, and the short story writer Alice Munro.

They may not have the overtly intellectual pizzazz of some of the books mentioned here, but I think the depth of their humanity and the mastery of their craft make them two of the greatest, most defining authors,of our time.

I’d second many of the suggestions (Gaddis, Kundera, Marquez) but I’d like to suggest two writers whose work has been deeply influential: the poet Elizabeth Bishop, and the short story writer Alice Munro.

They may not have the overtly intellectual pizzazz of some of the books mentioned here, but I think the depth of their humanity and the mastery of their craft make them two of the greatest, most defining authors of our time.